Influences of morningness-eveningness and time of day on narrative comprehension

An experiment was conducted to test the effects of time of day on narrative comprehension in morning and evening types. Two groups of Ss, each of them composed of eleven morning-types and eleven evening-types, read the same narrative at 9:00 and 17:00, respectively. A recognition task with three types of sentences (literal, similar in form, similar in content) were given immediately after that. According to the predictions, immediate memory performance was better in the morning vs afternoon for morning types and vice versa for evening types. Nevertheless, the results of false recognition (sentences similar in form and similar in content) showed a similar pattern between the morning and evening types. The relationship between the comprehension strategy adopted and memory performance is discussed with reference to multi-oscillatory theory.